


Widower's Weeds

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Police, Character Death, Deathfic, F/M, Genderswap, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Widower's Weeds

  


title: Widower's Weeds  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 1240  
fandom: McFassy  
rating: R  
notes: **Warnings for major character death.** A Jamie McAvoy fic, but an entirely different AU and completely unrelated to all the others that I've already written. This story is dedicated to [Clocks](http://hellowaveforms.tumblr.com), who encouraged me to write this and get it out of my system. As the fic involves details of death and of a funeral, please be guided accordingly.

  
There is a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. Plain copper, roughly hammered to a gleaming finish.

The ring is just a little bit too small on him, just enough that he has difficulties putting it on and taking it off. He keeps it on nearly constantly, though. It feels comfortable, like it was meant to be his all along, like he was meant to wear it from the start, even though it had never been made for him.

Even though he's come by it at second hand.

The inside of the ring is engraved with the letters JAM and a blurred year.

Michael twists the band on his finger, once, and it pulls at the skin: brief sharp flare of pain. Pain is good, he thinks. It helps him remember that he's still here.

Every breath hurts. Every heartbeat hurts. Every step hurts.

Forward. As she might have wanted. As she might have done, were their positions reversed now.

In the mirror he looks into his own eyes. The grey is rimmed red around the edges with fatigue and sorrow and anger. Dark blue shadows in his face from the endless sleepless nights. Three of them, now, since.

The bruise on his cheek is still livid, too. It's in the shape of a hand. January has a strong arm, and she hits like a ton of bricks - of the entire station, only Jamie could hit harder.

Michael gets dressed slowly. He can see and feel his own hands shaking. It takes him four tries to knot his plain black tie correctly.

Jamie is not here - and will no longer be here - to roll her eyes, to make fun, to sigh and tie the tie for him.

But some part of her must still be here, however, in the shadows of the room, in the scents left on the pillows, in the clothes scattered over the table and chairs next to the bed.

He can't close his eyes. If he does he'll start to cry. And if he starts to cry, he doesn't know if he can even go on.

He has to go on, because today he has to say goodbye, because today he has to face all the others, because today Jamie's mum and sister and best friend are here.

Michael looks around the room. Jamie's voice could still be echoing in the corners. Singing under her breath while she stripped her service pistol and cleaned it. Complaining as she came home from another bust, another car chase, and sitting down on newspaper laid out on the floor so she could brush broken glass out of her hair.

She's not here, and yet Michael feels exactly the opposite: that any moment now she'll come in, blood on her badge, shaking like a leaf in a high wind, but here, alive, smiling -

No.

Not going to happen.

He can still smell smoke.

There is a knock on the door.

"Come in," Michael says, a rasp around the edges.

Split-second of misplaced hope.

But the woman who comes in only vaguely resembles Jamie.

Her mother.

"Are you..." she says.

"No," Michael says, brusque.

"Me neither," she says, after a long and tense moment.

"No one ever is, not when this happens."

"She would have been the first to say so," she says.

Michael laughs, and it ends on a quiet sob.

Jamie's mother sighs heavily. "Come, my boy," she says. "Come on, before we disgrace ourselves."

"She'd never let us live it down," he says, tears tracking down his cheeks.

He goes to her, and they lean on each other for support.

Outside: faces full of sympathy everywhere he turns, all the way to the police station. He doesn't want or need any of it.

He wants her back, and no one can give him that.

The framed photograph is on a small table, set up a few feet away from her desk, in the only free space on the crowded floor of their division. It is surrounded by flowers and flanked by two tall pillar candles.

Here is Jamie as she was in life: blue eyes like a storm on the move. Short dark hair, copper and auburn highlights. Freckles and wine-dark lips. Courage and cunning and compassion in every line of her, and that's without taking her police uniform into consideration: cap and collar and color bars for medals and citations.

Next to the photograph, in front of it and to the right, is a small, plain wooden box banded in black ribbon.

Here is Jamie in death. This is all that's left of her: ashes, memories. A spray of her favorite flowers - carnations, deep scarlet blossoms tipped in white.

Jamie's mother leaves him at Jamie's desk - cleared now of her usual barely-organized mess of files and books.

January takes her place; she looks Michael over critically. "I'm sorry I had to hit you, last time," she murmurs.

"I needed it," Michael says, brushing a finger across the metal nameplate perched on the corner of the desk: Jamie A McAvoy.

She takes one of his hands, squeezing very gently.

He squeezes back, and sobs, and breaks away.

"Bear up, Fassbender," she says. "For your own sake, if not for hers."

"Do me a favor, please, Miss Jones," he says.

"I can try."

"I want in. I'll take her place."

January sighs. "She was telling you everything anyway, wasn't she."

"She told me she was going against your direct orders."

"I'm glad she did," January says at last. "All right. You're in. We'll look after you, we'll watch your back, and you'll help us."

"One more thing."

"What?"

He holds up his left hand.

The light in the room strikes dull sparks off the copper ring.

"Wear that or not, Michael," she says, very gently, "we all know what you were to each other."

"I'm going to be feeling like that for the rest of my life, aren't I."

"It's not my place to say."

"No one here can tell me that, January, so it might as well be you."

January sighs. "Don't give me another reason to hit you."

Michael shakes throughout the memorial service, and he stays seated; he can't trust himself to get to his feet - but at the end, somehow, he lifts the box with steady hands.

He carries Jamie straight to her grave, and though he can't stop crying he manages to keep his composure - not even when Jamie's sister suddenly wails and swoons away into her mother's arms. Not even when the other officers begin to look away, tears and anger and sadness all over their faces.

Unmoving, Michael watches as the tomb is sealed and earth is shoveled in, as turf is laid down and the tombstone moved into position. Engraved into the marble: her name, year of birth, year of death. The mourners flow around him, around her family, and he accepts their words of sympathy in a silent daze.

Finally, he's the last one there.

He gets down on his knees on the fresh sod - never mind his suit - and he places a white rose on the tombstone. The world is a painful blur to him. He leaves his fingertips pressed to the cold marble and he says, at last, "Goodbye."

The next time he has to fill in papers he fills in the _Civil Status_ field with the word "Widowed".  



End file.
